Introduction to Oregon and its Swedish Population
by Ernst Skarstedt

"Oregon och dess Svenska Befolkning" was originally published in Swedish in
Seattle 1911 (20 p.)

Ernst Skarstedt (1857 - 1929) had a privileged start in life, one that would
have opened many doors for him: his father was a professor of theology at Lund,
one of Sweden’s two old, prestigious universities, and his mother was the
daughter of a famous churchman. But Ernst Skarstedt was a restless young man, an
individualist, an independent thinker, not particularly religious, and not at
all interested in following his father’s wishes for a Swedish university
education. At an early age he was smitten by what was commonly referred to as
“America fever,” and in 1878, at the peak of Swedish emigration to the United
States, he joined in the exodus to the New World.

In the United States, Ernst Skarstedt soon became one of the most well-known
Swedish-American newspapermen, working as an editor or contributor to many of
the leading Swedish language newspapers in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York.
A restless soul, a constant traveler, Ernst Skarstedt nevertheless dreamed of a
rural way of life, and his editorial assignments were interspersed with attempts
at farming in both California and Washington. He was an obsessive keeper of
journals, documenting almost everything he saw or did. These journals would
later serve as the source for many of his 13 books, all of which were written in
Swedish, and almost all of which deal with the lives and activities of Swedes in
North America.

After surviving the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, but losing most of his
books and papers in the conflagration that followed, Skarstedt relocated to the
Seattle area and began work on an ambitious, three-volume history of the West
Coast states. These books told not only the general history of California,
Oregon, and Washington, but also carefully documented the Swedish presence
there. The books were titled Washington och dess svenska befolkning (1908),
California och dess svenska befolkning (1910), and Oregon och dess svenska
befolkning (1911). All three volumes are organized in the same way: a series of
introductory chapters describe the history, geography, agricultural and urban
centers of each state. Following chapters portray Swedish life in
America--settlements, churches, newspapers, and organizations. Finally each
volume concludes with a large biographical section of prominent Swedes. At the
time, the biographical section was probably the best way to create a market for
these books, and today it has become a gold mine of genealogical information on
the early Swedish immigration to the West Coast. Since Skarstedt occasionally
worked as an itinerant photographer, all three volumes contain a great number of
historical photographs of people and places.

The volume on the Swedes in Oregon is the slimmest of the three, and in the
preface to the book Skarstedt complains that the interest and cooperation of his
countrymen has been lukewarm at best. Still, it makes for some very interesting
reading. What follows here is an excerpt from Oregon och dess svenska befolkning,
chapters 10, 11, and 12, describing the life and activities of the Swedes in
Oregon around the turn of the century.